"Time begins now."
I could slowly feel my heartbeat increasingly start to race, with every second ticking on the system's screen. It was like I knew something terrible was going to happen.
We all started to panic, classmates turning on classmates and friends turning on friends.
"Listen!" Justin exclaimed over the sobs and screams, "We need to find who killed Ms. Cane and kill them in return. So it has to be someone in the back rows of the classroom, only someone sitting near her could decapitate her head off."
Pira snapped back quickly, "Kill them in return? You are a madman! You think it's fine to kill another human being?"
"Pira, death is our consequence if we don't kill someone or kill the mole. I hate to agree with Justin, but the mole has to go. It's better if only one person dies, rather than multiple people." I quickly responded. "Judging based on this system and Ms. Cane's death, I'm not taking any chances. This is straight out of a horror movie, and I think none of us wants to die here."
"She's right," a random girl, whose identity I didn't know, spoke out. "This is just like a fantasy light novel. Take this more seriously, our lives are at stake!"
Pira argued back to both of us, "Lily, look at Ms. Cane! Do you really think any student here is capable of slicing someone's head open in mere a few seconds?"
"Well, yes!" I angrily snapped at Pira, who suddenly decided to have rationality in an irrational situation. "I have no other choice but to believe it if it's right there in front of our eyes! Just look at her!"
Justin turned back to see the back row seats and pointed at the person nearest the body. "You. Noah."
Noah defended himself quickly, "What? Hey, just because I sit nearest to Ms. Cane, don't mind that I'm the mole!
"As if! You also look sketchy as hell since day one. You have a grown beard too, looking like a child molester. Out of all of us, I can only picture you as the mole!" I would've laughed at Justin's insults if it weren't for the dire event at hand.
I looked around the classroom, seeing what chance I could get for my best survival. "No, Justin is right. It's only right for us to suspect someone sitting so close to Ms. Cane. How did you not know she was dead before the rest of us? Isn't she literally sitting right behind you? Wouldn't the smell of blood hit you first, then the rest of us, giving you more time to spare?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not how it works! She just died, I don't know what happened, but I'm sure I didn't kill her!"
I moved from my standing position to peer around the rest of the class, trying to spot something. Pira noticed my movement too and took the hint without telling anyone else.
The keyword, mole, was in the description of the event. It may be a stretch, but I had to see if any possibility was real. There might be a chance of an animal mole being around the classroom. The only problem being I have no clue how a mole can slice someone's head straight off the bone.
"Time left remaining: 8 minutes."
Holy cow, how did the system only give us such a short time to kill someone or find the mole?
"Screw this."
It seemed like Justin had the same thought as I as he lunged toward Noah, screaming his lungs out. Noah desperately fought off, punching and scratching at Justin's face. Yet it was futile. Justin was a world champion in karate, and not only that, but some classmates even joined in on helping Justin murder Noah. Noah, in short, was going to be dead soon.
Everyone else was distracted by the ongoing loud violence near the back of the room, forming a circle of students crying or paralyzed in fear.
I looked at Pira, and we shared a look. There's no way the system meant an animal when referring to "mole".
"Time left remaining: 5 minutes left. Warning, the mole has not been killed."
I took a glance at the system screen once more.
[Or, kill someone else in this room, and your event is considered completed.
…
Consequence of incompletion: Death.]
Oh my god.
I knew what to do. The real question is, if I could actually pull it off.
The action of ending one's life.
I swiftly grabbed my artist's razor knife hidden in my pencil case. Perhaps the only time taking art classes was useful in my life.
Pira did no similar actions to me, and only watched in horror near the front corner of the room as I took my next steps.
"Lily…" I didn't respond.
I muttered quietly under my breath, "I'm so sorry for this."
My hand shook once. Just once. Then pure survival instinct took over.
I snuck up behind the random girl whose name I still had no recollection of, and slashed the back of her neck with the small blade.
Perhaps I targeted her because she was isolated from the rest. Perhaps I did it because she was smaller, shorter, and skinnier than everyone else. And perhaps I did it to make myself less guilty, less guilty to kill someone I didn't know rather than someone I knew personally.
She screamed in terror, but it only blended in with the other noises being made in the fighting pit. I ignored the fear and trembling in my body and mind telling me that this wasn't right at all (what else was I supposed to do to survive?), and instead took a random student's laptop from a desk and raised it high with my left hand.
"Time left: 4 minutes. The mole has not been killed."
She turned around and cried out for help. I swung the laptop straight onto her, breaking the computer in the process. Keypads and wires flung out of the laptop, dancing on the dusty floor around her.
I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I have to do this!
I tightened my grip on the sharp knife, looking down on the body below me. Red covered my every being, covering my school uniform along with my arms, hands, and hair. The unknown girl spat out blood, her eyes hazel and dazingly looking up at mine. I couldn't avoid eye contact. She desperately tried to take one more breath.
I didn't want to do it. But wanting had nothing to do with surviving. It was wrong, but I had no idea of what else I could've done in such a short time.
"Time left: last 3 minutes. Final warning, the mole has not been killed. Failure in completion results in permanent expiration."
It was a mess. A terrible and messy. This was now my reality. Only after her death did I notice that I wasn't the only one having the same idea as me. I was only lucky enough for no one to target me while I was killing a student.
I locked eyes with someone meters away from me. Pira. She had yet to kill someone. Pira always had extreme conviction in her moral compass, so deep inside my heart, I knew she couldn't do such an unjust act.
"Pira! Go! Do something!"
She only shook her head, burrowing her body in her arms. Tears streamed down her face, and onto her brown sweater she was wearing.
"No no no!" Not Pira.
"Lily."
I stopped my blabbering.
For a millisecond, everything went quiet. Not because Justin's violence stopped, and not because the screams stopped, but because my body and my soul could only focus on Pira's last trembling words.
"Time left: 1 minute."
She smiled bitterly in my general direction.
"At least you completed the event. I knew you could, you've always been good at handling gore and horror movies…" She stops smiling. "But I… I don't want to die!"
Before I could say anything else, her entire body compressed into one thin line.
"No time left remaining. Congrats to those who have survived."
The line splattered into liquid, overflowing the wooden desks near her. One second, Pira was there, and now she wasn't.
"Ah… Ah!" I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just… was there.
Why am I not crying?
She was my friend, so why am I not crying? Why? We weren't the closest of friends, but she still mattered to me.
What's wrong with me?
"Phase one is completed."
"Hey!" I heard Justin grimace, "Who was the mole?"
"... The mole is still alive."
"Ugrhh…" I wailed, trying my best to compose myself. I didn't know if I was trying to make myself cry or if I was just making noises out of pure despair.
"So Lily's the mole?" Justin clapped back.
"The mole may or may not be inside your classroom. Location is irrelevant. Completion requires a kill, regardless of one's identity." So all that blood, panic, and despair? It meant nothing? The mole, who killed Ms. Cane, was still here in this school?
"All that for nothing?" Justin harshly barked at System Neo. "We could've just left?"
"There are always different choices a person can make during an event."
"How helpful."
The System Neo spoke again, "Please head to the school gym for phase two. Disobedience is met with punishment. Once the needed survivors meet up there, phase two will begin."
I looked around the room. There were only two survivors left in the room. Justin and I.
Someone, please, give me my old new life back.